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Authoritarianism grows not because people believe in it, but because they feel powerless — that was Rollo May’s warning, and this lecture from Academy of Ideas takes it seriously. It traces how the modern West quietly traded courage for comfort, building a culture of hyperconformity from social validation, virtue-signaling, and schooling that worships the majority. When being good comes to mean merely obeying, ethics collapses into compliance, and a fearful crowd becomes ready fuel for tyranny. The antidote is moral courage — the willingness, like Viktor Pestov against the Soviet regime, to face danger rather than surrender your conscience to the state.
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academyofideas.com members authoritarianism in religion and science let alone politics
is becoming increasingly accepted not particularly because so many people explicitly believe in it
but because they feel themselves individually powerless and anxious so what else can one do
except follow the mass political leader, or follow the authority of customs, public opinion,
and social expectations. The American psychologist Rollo May wrote these words in 1953,
and in the decades that followed, the West tiptoed into tyranny. A mass surveillance state
was established. Free speech gave way to increasing levels of censorship. Statist
bureaucracy and stifling regulations invaded ever more areas of life. And tax rates reached
levels that in the past would have caused a revolution. However, in recent years this
tiptoe into tyranny has turned into a sprint, as some western countries are flirting with
full-blown totalitarian rule. But the existence of power-hungry and psychologically disturbed
politicians who desire total control is not what makes our situation particularly precarious,
for such individuals exist in all ages. Rather, our troubles lie with the fact that very few
people possess the one virtue that can turn the tide back in the direction of freedom,
that being the virtue of courage, and as Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned in 1978,
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices
in the West in our days.
Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the
beginning of the end?
In this video we are going to explore how a hyperconformity and blind obedience has
infected the West and, in the process, crowded out the cultivation of courage. We will discuss
how a widespread cowardice is permitting the rise of authoritarianism and how a rebirth
of courage is the antidote to our precarious political predicament.
The pathological conformity that infects the West is generations in the making and the
result of a confluence of factors. It is driven by a value system in which social validation
occupies a preeminent position. It is furthered by the use of social media and the fact that
success on these platforms is achieved by virtue signaling and conforming to the moral
flavors of the day. It is also a product of an education system which deifies the democratic
ideal and promotes the rights of the majority over the rights of the individual. These factors,
combined with others, has created a society of hyperconformists. And as Rollo May explained,
The opposite to courage, in our particular age, is automaton conformity.
One of the ways that Western conformity manifests is through a blind obedience and a pathological
need to follow rules.
Most people believe that to be a good person is to be a compliant person, and to do what
one is told by those in positions of political power and their lackeys in the media and celebrity
culture.
In acting with blind obedience, the conformist fails to differentiate between morality and
legality, and so remains willfully ignorant of the fact that government rules can be immoral,
driven by corruption, and that sometimes they pave the way for individual and social ruin.
Or as Rollo May explains, Our particular problem in the present day is an overwhelming tendency
toward conformity. In such times, ethics tend more and more to be identified with obedience.
One is good, to the extent that one obeys the dictates of society.
It is as though the more unquestioning obedience the better. But what really is ethical about
obedience? If one’s goal were simple obedience, one could train a dog to fulfill the requirements
very well. To see other people exercise independent judgment, self-responsibility,
and self-reliance disturbs the conformist’s belief in the value of obedience and so threatens their
sense of self. It is not the case, therefore, that the conformist obeys while permitting others the
freedom to make their own choice. Rather, as Stanley Feldman explains in a paper titled
Enforcing Conformity, people who value social conformity support the government when it wants
to increase its control over social behavior and punish nonconformity. Valuing social conformity
increases the motivation for placing restrictions on behavior. The desire for social freedom is now
subservient to the enforcement of social norms and rules. Thus, groups will be targeted for
repression to the extent that they challenge social conformity.
When a majority advocates for the government enforcement of conformity, a society places
itself on what the psychologist Erwin Staub called a continuum of destruction.
As the government uses coercion and force to punish a non-compliant minority, the majority
rationalizes their support of such authoritarian measures by further demonizing the non-compliant,
thus leading to increasingly severe government measures.
One psychological consequence of harm-doing is further devaluation of victims.
People tend to assume that victims have earned their suffering by their actions or character.
In several countries in the 20th century, such as the Soviet Union, Turkey, Germany,
Cambodia, and China, government measures such as banning certain minority groups from restaurants,
pubs, cafes, and other public spaces, imposing curfews, expelling them from their jobs, forcing
them to pay fines and restricting their freedom of movement and assembly, functioned as the
first steps on a continuum of destruction that ended in mass scapegoating, mass imprisonment
and mass murder.
In his book The Psychology of Good and Evil, Erwin Staub elaborates on the psychological
mechanism that facilitates a continuum of destruction.
How does harmful behavior become the norm?
Doing harm to a good person or passively witnessing it is inconsistent with a feeling of responsibility
for the welfare of others and the belief in a just world, inconsistency troubles us.
We minimize it by reducing our concern for the welfare of those we harm or allow to suffer.
We devalue them, justify their suffering by their evil nature or by higher ideals, a changed
view of the victims, changed attitude toward that suffering, and changed self-concept result.
To counter the continuum of destruction that is a product of too much conformity and too
much government force. More people need to act with moral courage. Moral courage entails
a willingness to encounter risks so as to defy immoral orders, reject authoritarian
government control, and to stand up for the disappearing values of truth, freedom, and
justice. And as Rushworth Kidder explains in his book Moral Courage,
Where there’s no danger, there’s no courage. Anyone can endure security and well-being.
The real challenges arise in the face of hazard.
So it is with moral courage, where danger is endured for the sake of an overarching
commitment to conscience, principles or core values.
Some acts of moral courage are accompanied by mild risks, such as being ridiculed, insulted
or ostracized.
If, for example, we speak out against a status quo belief in the presence of a group of conformists,
or if we refuse to adhere to social practices or mandates that are immoral or idiotic, we
We may lose friends or attract choice words from the obedient, but this is a small price
to pay in exchange for doing what we believe is right.
For as Rollo May explains, the hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity
to stand on one’s own convictions.
However, sometimes acts of moral courage are accompanied by more grave risks including
but not limited to, the loss of employment, physical or financial penalties, imprisonment
or in some cases even death.
Of all the agonizing ethical dilemmas facing humanity, writes Rushworth Kidder, few are
more wrenching than the choice between what’s right for the world and what’s right for
you and your family.
Carl Jung called the men and women willing to confront great dangers in defiance of tyranny
the true leaders of mankind.
And to learn about the mindset of one of these leaders we can turn to the story of Viktor
Pestov.
In 1967 Pestov was a 20-year-old living in the Soviet Union.
His family was well off by Soviet standards and his mother was a high-ranking member of
the KGB.
Yet Pestov could not avert his eyes from the boot of tyranny that was crushing society
and so he took a keen interest in political matters.
And when Soviet tanks rode into Czechoslovakia and violently stamped out the human rights
protest known as the Prague Spring, Pestov told his friend,
We must do something about this.
Pestov and his brother set up a clandestine group called Free Russia, and he warned those
who joined that they would likely be arrested within the year.
Yet all agreed that the battle for freedom justified the risk, and so they began publishing
pamphlets exposing the lies of the Soviet regime and snuck out in the dead of night
to distribute them.
The KGB quickly identified the group as a threat and in 1970 Pestov was arrested.
His mother was fired from the KGB and never allowed to work in Russia again, and Pestov
was sentenced to five years in a Soviet prison camp, Pestov decided to stand up to the Soviet
regime and therein place himself and, inadvertently, his mother, in great danger, because he could
not in good conscience sit idly by as a corrupt regime of thousands destroyed the lives of
millions. He understood that if he did not stand up for the freedom of others, he could
not expect others to stand up for his, and that if nobody did anything, everyone was
And so, he chose to face danger, to fight for freedom, and to place a portion of the
fate of society on his back.
He saw himself as fighting against the malevolent idea that, someone will think for you, someone
will make decisions for you, and as he explained, a person should be the master of his own fate.
In a conversation with Rushworth Kidder, Pestov reflected on the grave dangers he voluntarily
East, and on the five years he spent in prison.
I believe I did the right thing, Pestov concluded.
I wasn’t silent.
I was saying and doing what I had to do.
There was a very small contribution of mine to the fact that the Communists were pushed
out of power.
Unless more people can muster up the moral courage to renounce conformity in favor of
standing up for freedom and for what is right, and at the very least make a small contribution
to combating tyranny, Western societies will continue moving towards what Ayn Rand called
the stage of the ultimate inversion, or as she warns, we are fast approaching the stage
of the ultimate inversion, the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases,
while the citizens may act only by permission, which is the stage of the darkest periods
of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
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Source: Academy of Ideas